"This was something kind of on my bucket list this year," said Kennedy, the 22-year-old great-grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. "I think everyone wants to get Rookie of the Year their first year, and it’s awesome to get it. I’m definitely humbled by it, and I’m looking forward to the future and seeing what we can do in the future."

Kennedy added his name to the list of the truck series’ rookie award winners, a star-studded group that includes current Sprint Cup Series stars Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Austin Dillon and Carl Edwards. As satisfying as claiming the award was for the driver, the accomplishment and growth wasn’t lost on his proud mother, Lesa France Kennedy, International Speedway Corporation CEO and Vice Chairperson of NASCAR.

"He said it’s been a great learning experience, and not just from a competition standpoint, but from the overall sport and how it all comes together," she said. "That’s been a wonderful experience; it has been for me, and I think it is for him as well."

Ben Kennedy opened and closed the season in his home state of Florida, starting the season with a Keystone Light Pole Award and multiple laps led when the curtain was lifted at Daytona International Speedway. In between the season’s bookends, he amassed seven top-10 finishes in 22 races, holding off challenger Tyler Reddick for rookie honors.

While Kennedy said he’d hoped for more consistency during the course of the season, he never dipped out of the top 10 in standings after the Daytona opener.

"We just had a string of bad luck really, just kind of oddball things, flat tires with a couple laps to go and broken studs and running out of gas here and there," Kennedy said. "But I think if you look at the whole season altogether and our really strong runs, I think when we were on, we were really on. We were up there with the top dogs, and when we were off, we struggled a little bit, but we worked hard and we worked together to make the most out of each position and each lap."

Kennedy said his plans for 2015 hadn’t fallen completely into place and that he was still working on ironing out the next steps.

"Hopefully we’ll announce something here in the offseason," Kennedy said. "Just trying to figure out all the small pieces."

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"We didn’t finish the year like we wanted to, but we’ve got to look at the positive side," the 20-year-old Blaney said. "We had a good year and we were in the hunt, and that’s all we can look at."

The roundabout way to fifth place wasn’t without its adventures. When Blaney tried to leave his pit stall during the fourth of seven caution periods shortly after the race’s midpoint, the shifter level snapped off, forcing his No. 29 Ford to stall.

Once the word spread about the parts failure, his in-truck camera focused in as Blaney held up the broken lever. His Brad Keselowski Racing crew was able to inspect the damage on the SprintVision big screen behind their pit stall.

"Luckily, I guess the camera paid off because we had him hold up the piece so we could tell where it broke, how far," said Chad Kendrick, Blaney’s crew chief. "We know what it looks like, and we knew depending on where it broke what we needed to do to try to help him out. So we knew how much nub was left and what the size was, so our plan was to try to change it, but we knew we’d lose a ton of track position — maybe even a lap — doing it. Then he said he would deal with it, and he did a great job dealing with it, but I don’t know how he did that."

During the next caution period, they handed Blaney vise-grips, which he fiddled with for almost a full lap under yellow to rig a makeshift lever. Satisfied with his repair, Blaney methodically marched back into contention for the lead, eventually going three-wide up front with Sprint Cup star Kyle Busch and race winner Darrell Wallace Jr. with 15 laps remaining. But Blaney’s truck was better suited to longer green-flag runs, and he wound up shuffled back to the bottom of the top five amidst the hard-nosed racing.

"It took off a lot better than I thought it was going to at the end for about five or six laps, and then it fell off the way it did," Blaney said. "Took off good, showed some promise, and shame it wasn’t a five-lap shootout deal at the end. Just couldn’t get it."

Blaney and Kendrick debriefed on pit road afterward, eventually joined by their team owner. Keselowski peered into the cockpit to inspect the make-do shifter before congratulating both driver and crew chief on a solid campaign.

Kendrick shrugged at the final standings while the fireworks went off in Victory Lane, but he expressed optimism about BKR’s outlook while acknowledging Crafton’s historic achievement.

"You know, a top-five, I can’t hold my head down too low," Kendrick said. "We wanted to win the championship. The first thing we had to do was outrun the 88 (Crafton) and we did that all night, but we needed him to have bad luck and it didn’t happen. Hats off to those guys — they ran good all year. We’ll come back next year and the team will look a little different, but we’ll be back here and try to get Ford some more victories."

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